EU Déjà Vu in the Caribbean

Just as the European Union was sold to Europeans as a trade agreement even though it was actually a political union, so it has been sold again, this time to the islands of the Caribbean.

Many Europeans are now discovering that their nations have been deceitfully lured into membership in a multi-national trade bloc, once known as the Common Market, that is now controlling them politically. Known in its current manifestation as the European Union, this bloc now numbers 27 formerly independent nations.

That the Common Market was intended from the beginning to become a supra-national government has been meticulously exposed in a superb 600-page book, The Great Deception, authored by British newspaper columnist Christopher Booker and political analyst Richard North. These two researchers point out that what has become the EU was promoted in their nation and others as a mere trade agreement. But they document that the EU is now a political force controlling their laws and traditions, and the claim at its beginning that it was a mere economic association was a lie.

Booker and North actually refer to the EU as "the most spectacular coup d'etat in all history." Other Europeans have begun to realize that their nations have succumbed to the same false claims and are now equally trapped. Roman Herzog served as president of Germany from 1994 to 1999. He stated in 2007 that "84 percent of the legal acts in Germany" stem from EU headquarters in Brussels, not from the German legislature. He wonders if it's realistic to continue referring to his country as a "parliamentary democracy." Czech President Vaclav Klaus warned in 2003 that the steady immersion of Europe's nations into the EU would lead eventually to a situation where "only one state will remain." He calls what is being built "the European superstate." And Britain's Mike Nattrass, one of the leaders of a splinter political party in his country, lamented, "The EU was sold to the British people as a trading agreement and has turned into a political union which is changing our basic laws and traditions." Throughout the EU's formerly independent nations, many have awakened to their plight. But reversing what has been done will be very difficult.

The EU's own documents, such as the 2003 EU Draft Constitution, show that the EU schemers envision not just regional governance but global governance, with the United Nations very much a part of their global designs. The Draft Constitution indicated subservience to the UN in such expressions as "strict observance for," "in accordance with," "respect for," "in conformity with," "without prejudice to," and "establishing all appropriate forms of cooperation with" — always referring to the UN Charter.

In the United States, the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) — likewise sold to Congress and the American people as a way to spur trade among the United States, Canada and Mexico — has been discovered to have judicial teeth and other restrictions on sovereignty in its 900 pages. But it only affected three nations. When the newer and more comprehensive Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) was proposed in 2003 as a beneficial economic agreement among 34 Western Hemisphere nations, citizen objections in the United States blocked it from even being brought before Congress.

Then another attempt to entangle the three North American nations emerged in the form of the Security and Prosperity Partnership. The intent is to create, step by step, a North American Union modeled after the EU, a not-so-hidden scheme that has stimulated another round of citizen objections. The New American has repeatedly warned about this threat, with much of the information assembled in our special "North American Union" issue of October 15, 2007.

The ruse promising mere trade arrangements that has compromised Europe's once-independent nations continues to be employed. Now, its major proponent has become the European Union itself.

Working the Plan in the Caribbean

On October 15, 2008, leaders of 13 mostly English-speaking Caribbean nations signed a complex Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the executive arm of the European Union known as the European Commission. As a result of that action, they are now linked in an economic union with the 27-member EU. These nations are Antigua & Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, St. Kitts & St. Nevis, Suriname, and Trinidad & Tobago. This new arrangement replaces previous agreements that were merely trade-only pacts between Europe and the region. It promises to do to the Caribbean nations what the EU has already done to Europe.

Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo initially refused to agree with the EPA, wanting a "goods only" pact for his nation. Immediately threatened with punitive tariffs by EU officials, he appealed to the United Nations pointing out that the EU had employed bullying tactics. He pleaded in vain for a renegotiation of the arrangement. Eventually obtaining the EU's pledge to "take into account" his concerns (but without any substantive commitment), he reluctantly directed his ambassador to the EU, Dr. Patrick Gomes, to include Guyana as the 14th nation to agree to the pact on October 21. Among the 15 mostly English-speaking Caribbean nations, only Haiti has not signed the EPA, mainly because a series of devastating 2008 hurricanes ravaged the country and all attention has been given to rebuilding what was destroyed. Haiti has until 2010 to join, and likely will do so by then.

Additionally reaching out with its tentacles to other parts of the world, the EU has identified six geographical regions where its trade agreements are being negotiated. These include four areas in Africa, one in the Pacific, and the aforementioned pact in the Caribbean. Undoubtedly, the EU commissioners will point to what they have accomplished in the Caribbean to promote similar entanglements in these other areas.

The chief EU negotiator for the Caribbean arrangement was British citizen Peter Mandelson, once labeled by British media as a "prince of darkness" because of his ruthlessness and youthful communist background. It was he who browbeat the Caribbean leaders into signing the 2,000-page EPA document. Now legally binding, it will require each participating country to begin removing tariffs by 2011. But tariffs constitute the major source of revenue for these small nations and will leave each dependent on other sources for funds to operate. (Mandelson unexpectedly left his post just prior to the formal signing of the EPA. He immediately returned to England where he now serves in the government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown.)

A full year before the formal signing of this EPA, Portugal's José Manuel Barroso — who has been president of the European Commission since 2004 — sent a letter to prime ministers Bruce Golding of Jamaica and Owen Arthur of Barbados. It threatened them in no uncertain terms with "dire consequences" if their countries did not accept the EPA. Obviously, it was very important to EU leaders to entangle these small nations in their web.

All during 2008, various influential West Indies leaders sounded the alarm about the EPA. Havelock Brewster, former ambassador of Guyana to the EU, warned that the document contained "non-binding, declaratory, general statements on the part of EC" but "specific, time-bound, binding, and subject to sanctions" requirements for the various small nations. He added, "We should avoid entering into open-ended commitments."

Also concerned about what was being proposed was Professor Norman Girvan of the West Indies Institute of International Relations. A former secretary-general of the Association of Caribbean States, he pointed out, "The final stages of the EPA were rushed to conclusion with little opportunity for the public to become familiar with its provisions and to deliberate its implications.... The region will have to live with the consequences indefinitely, consequences that may prove difficult to reverse." He concluded, "The EPA sets up an elaborate institutional structure of government ... endowed with a degree of supra-nationality that [our existing] governance does not possess."

Economics professor Dr. Clive Thomas of Guyana stated in an article published by Caribbean Media Sphere that "through a mixture of blatant bullyism, bribery, cajolery, deception, intellectual dishonesty and plain bluff, the EU has worked a monumental deception on the region." And former Caribbean ambassador to the World Trade Organization Sir Ronald Sanders said that the EPA "may well return Caribbean nations to the state of plantation economies where the commanding heights are owned by foreign companies run by expatriate managers and the Caribbean people are merely workers." He warned that in any dispute arising over the agreement "individual countries will be up against the full force and resources of the EU as a whole. The potential for disaster is glaring."

The September 14, 2008 issue of Trinidad Guardian carried a commentary by Dennis Partin that summed up what was about to transpire: "Europe is, no doubt, laughing and congratulating itself on how easy it once again divided, conquered and ruled the Caribbean."

But it is not just the Caribbean nations that will lose their autonomy. Awareness about what was occurring in the Western Hemisphere has arisen in Uganda, one of the nations next in line for EU pressure to sign an EPA. An article published in Uganda's Monitor Online stated: "While some countries believe that signing the EPA would bring to an end their problems of accessing European markets ..., others believe that the agreement would worsen the difficulties their economies are facing, thereby subduing them into being servants to the developed world."

Only weeks before the fateful EPA signing in October, British-based Christian Aid, a charitable group working among the poor in 50 Latin American countries, urged the Caribbean leaders not to accept the EPA. Leaders of this privately run organization stated that the EU was pursuing its own mercantile interests, that the so-called partnership between the EU and the small Caribbean countries was really "between the bully and the bullied," and that European producers would "flood the region and force local competitors out of business."

Another red flag about these plans was raised by Dr. Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and the former chief economist for the World Bank. Speaking in Ghana in July 2008, where he was urging that small nation to avoid losing its identity, the MIT professor pointed out that the EU's $12 trillion economy is "88 times larger" than all of the Caribbean nations being pressured into an EPA. Stiglitz, who resigned (or got fired) from the World Bank in 1999 has campaigned for years against "extremely managed trade agreements" that undergird the world trading system. In previous comments, he has characterized the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization as "interchangeable masks of a single governance system."

These various warnings went unheeded and the EPA was signed as noted above. The small nations of the Caribbean will now be dominated economically by the EU preparatory to being further dominated politically in the near future. The process that has entangled the 27 nations of the EU has been successfully imposed on the small Caribbean nations.

Noteworthy among those promoting regionalization and all that it entails was Trinidad Prime Minister Patrick Manning. On August 14, 2008, he quietly arranged flights to his capital for three other prime ministers (those of Grenada, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent & the Grenadines). Each of these national leaders then signed a memorandum of understanding committing them to the formation of an area-wide single economy by 2011, and full political integration by 2013. Manning then traveled to five other countries in the region cajoling their government leaders to accept this same memorandum of understanding.

All of Latin America Targeted

Last August, the website grain.org published a "briefing" on the EU's continuing designs on all of Latin America. Entitled "Latin America's Free Trade Agreements With the European Union — An Agenda for Domination," the 16-page report states that the region "will be incorporated into an expanded version of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), except that now it will be linked to the European Union rather than the USA (as was envisaged under the FTAA)."

The report notes that all negotiations with the EU "have been conducted largely in secret, which prevents parliaments, citizens and social movements from obtaining any relevant information." Secrecy is needed, the report continues, "to prevent the kind of social mobilisation that helped scupper the FTAA." This is an acknowledgement of the successful effort waged by The New American and the John Birch Society to block U.S. entry into the FTAA and the planned North American Union.

The following statements taken verbatim from this report demonstrate the impact of free-trade agreements in general and their results following the EU's vigorous luring of nations into them, either individually or in blocs of nations.

• "In order to put pressure on countries that take a more independent position or are more willing to defend their national interest, the EU has negotiated with regional blocs."

• "The agreements with the European Union are notable for their scope and for covering much more than strictly economic matters."

• "A fundamental characteristic of treaties with the EU is that they are not only broad in scope but also designed to be extended.... The EU does not therefore need to sign the same agreement with all countries because it can achieve in future reviews anything that it does not achieve in the first round."

• "Parliaments and social movements are denied a chance to reject the changes.... This means that countries are giving up ... the right to exercise national sovereignty."

• "If the EU considers that a country has not complied with an agreement, it can take that country to a private tribunal whose decisions are binding. If the country in question does not then comply, the EU can take reprisal measures such as unilaterally increasing tariffs or banning imports from that country."

• "[Because of free trade agreements] Chile has lost control over a significant quantity of resources: 70 per cent of its mining exports are today handled by foreign companies."

• "In Mexico, the economic damage is even clearer. Its overall trade deficit increased from a little over US$9 billion in 2002, when the country signed an agreement with Europe, to almost US$19 billion in 2006."

• "The biggest myth about free trade agreements is that they will bring economic benefits."

• "'Free trade treaties are instruments of colonisation and domination.' [Quoting] President Evo Morales [Bolivia], in response to the request from presidents Alan García [Peru] and Álvaro Uribe [Colombia] to accelerate negotiations between the EU and the Andean Community of Nations."

The EU's designs on the Caribbean and on all of Latin America make perfect sense when it is understood that the architects behind what is euphemistically called a "new world order" intend to use the EU and other regional blocs to build, step by step and piece by piece, global government controlled by themselves. (See "The World Government Two-Step" by Thomas R. Eddlem in our July 11, 2005 issue.) This grand design, examined many times by this magazine, also makes sense of the EU-United Nations connection alluded to earlier, since the UN would serve as the umbrella for the developing instruments of global governance including the EU.

The Big Picture

After surveying the evidence, no one can honestly dispute that the United Nations was created for the purpose of world government. (See "Framework for World Government" by Dennis Behreandt in our July 11, 2005 issue.) While too many Americans still believe the UN to be benign, or that rule by it would somehow be beneficial, or that the organization is a ridiculous failure worthy of no one's concern, progress toward it becoming the ruler of all nations and all peoples continues steadily. A mere glance at the UN's organizational chart confirms the long-range goal. Should the UN ever achieve ultimate power, be assured there will be world tyranny. Placing all power in any repository — the UN certainly included — would be catastrophic.

The world body came into being in 1945 at its San Francisco founding conference. Some attendees openly stated their desire to create what the League of Nations had attempted to construct in the aftermath of World War I. But the League never amounted to very much because the United States wouldn't join. Disappointed but not defeated by America's refusal to participate, the world planners of that era immediately went to work to ensure that a second try at world rule would succeed. Part of their effort included formation of England's Royal Institute of International Affairs and America's Council on Foreign Relations, two significant promoters of world control.

The top official at the UN's 1945 founding conference, the individual named as its secretary-general, was Alger Hiss, an American citizen who was later discovered to be a secret communist loyal to the USSR. That he sought to deliver our nation and the rest of mankind to world rule cannot be denied. Also, the U.S. delegation at the UN's founding conference contained 43 individuals who held membership in the Council on Foreign Relations. Through its members and its publications, the CFR has spurred acceptance of globalism while issuing voluminous propaganda about the need for such a concentration of power. It helped persuade the U.S. Senate to approve the United Nations Charter by the lopsided vote of 89 to 2. The delegation from Moscow happily went along, knowing full well that the Charter was a blueprint for the kind of dictatorial world government already existing in Moscow.

Today, 192 nations hold membership in the UN. These include China with a population of 1.3 billion, India with one billion, the United States with 305 million, numerous other countries with tens of millions, and a score or more of island republics with small, even tiny, populations. Those who have long championed the UN eventually realized the difficulty of luring each of these nations one by one into control by the UN. So an increasingly obvious alternative plan arose whereby formation of economic blocs of nations would be undertaken so that watered-down individuality accomplished by these linkages would set the stage for complete loss of sovereignty.

What is also obvious after scrutinizing the activity of the EU in bringing nations into the world-government web is that a major engine for world government control has shifted from the United States to the European Union. Citizen awareness of the fraudulent nature of free-trade agreements in the United States has brought this about, although U.S. leaders can still be counted on to pursue the same nefarious goal. Similar awareness elsewhere will "scupper" the plans of the world-government advocates, and could reverse already lost sovereignty in so many once-independent nations.

Luring the world's many independent nations into the UN's web with trade pacts sold as economic bonanzas has been the modus operandi. While the plotters knew what they were doing, few national leaders realized that economic union precedes political union and will eventually mean loss of independence. If all nations can be made submissive to several economic unions, and those unions are led by individuals who gradually and deceptively convert them into political unions, the path to world government will have been forged.

Janet Doon, a Trinidad resident, supplied research for this article.

We appreciate Mr. Simmons' correct observation below and have edited the relevant sentence.

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